Section: US & Canada

Fidel Castro jailed and tortured political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin during the Great Terror. He murdered more Cubans in his first three years in power than Hitler murdered Germans during his first six. Fidel Castro shattered — through mass-executions, mass-jailings, mass larceny and exile — virtually every family on the island of...

The huge structure that will prevent further leaks of radiation from Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant will be moved into its final position on November 29. …read more Source: Radio Free Europe / Radio...

Now that the British have voted to secede from the European Union and America has chosen a president who has never before held public office, the French appear to be following suit. In Sunday’s runoff to choose a candidate to face Marine Le Pen of the National Front in next spring’s presidential election, the center-right Republicans...

Background: The third of six children, Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born on August 13, 1926 (although some sources claim that he was born a year later), in Cuba’s eastern province of Oriente. His father, Angel, was a wealthy sugar plantation owner originally from Spain. Raised in affluence while surrounded by poverty, Fidel Castro was...

It is now three weeks since the U.S. elections, and except for writing a short piece that appeared in Helsinki in Finnish, this is the first time that I have put pen to paper to comment on them. I greatly appreciate the notes from several readers asking why I have been silent. There were two reasons. First, writing when one is extremely involved...

Few European leaders celebrated the results of the U.S. presidential election with as much gusto as much as Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary. It makes sense: Orban and President-elect Donald Trump share a love of border fences, an open admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, a deep skepticism of American involvement abroad,...

Well, except for a few professors, a documentarian, a pollster, a cartoonist and a 2000 episode of The Simpsons, we all got it flat wrong. Billionaire Donald Trump will be the 45th US President from January 20, 2017. But wait a minute – is his victory really so shocking? Not at all. Yes, low voter turnout (millennials, where were you?), the...

A hard-right politician, written off by pollsters and establishment pundits for month, rockets to the top of the polls in his party’s presidential primary. He vows to “conquer Islamic totalitarianism,” promises to clamp down on mass immigration, and calls for a closer relationship with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. When the vote is finally...

A stencil graffiti featuring Fidel Castro’s image says in Spanish “Fidel among us,” in an alleyway in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, Nov. 27, 2016. (Credit: AP) In the aftermath of Fidel Castro’s death, President-elect Donald Trump issued the following tweet on Monday: If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban...

Ukraine’s former president Viktor Yanukovych on Monday blamed armed nationalist radicals for fomenting violence in the 2014 Maidan protests that led to scores of protesters being killed and ultimately prompted him to flee into exile. His testimony to a Ukrainian court via a video link from neighboring Russia was the first time Ukrainian...